I think at this point we can all agree that Tom Hooper's adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage musical, CATS, will go down as one of the biggest, most ridiculed flops of all time. It joins the ranks of other misbegotten screen epics like WILD WILD WEST, PLUTO NASH, and more, with stories from behind the scenes painting the making of the film as something of a disaster in its own right. And now, none other than the show's original composer Andrew Lloyd Webber himself is piling on this disastrous epic, with him telling the Sunday Times (via Deadline) that "the problem with the film was that Tom Hooper decided that he didn’t want anybody involved in it who was involved in the original show," adding that "the whole thing was ridiculous."
Ouch. To me, Webber's comments seem perfectly reasonable, and it's a shame Hooper didn't seek out some input from the people that made such a silly concept (singing humanoid cats???) into a mammoth, worldwide success. Obviously Webber knew what he was doing. That said, some of the other folks dinging CATS have left a bad taste in my mouth, specifically when James Corden and Rebel Wilson presented an Oscar in full CATS regalia, slamming the VFX. That's a touch rich from the two people who arguably gave the two worst performances in the film.
Anyways, time will tell whether Hooper can recover from this. Will he be remembered as the man who gave us the Oscar-winning THE KING'S SPEECH, or the guy who screwed-up CATS? Only time will tell.
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